Vegetation

Aquatic vegetation is important for many reasons (poster).
Several monitoring methods have been or are being used at the Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources Mississippi River Monitoring Field Station at La Crosse to monitor aquatic vegetation.

The Wisconsin Field Station's vegetation specialist interpreted
the color infrared photos for floating leafed, emergent, and terrestrial
vegetation. Other employees funded by LTRMP partners register
these data on base maps and digitize them to produce Land Cover/Land
Use maps. (See
procedures manual # 95-P008-2)

Many attractive birds and wild flowers use backwater and
moist-soil habitat or vegetation found in the Upper Mississippi
River floodplain. Pictured above are wild iris, swamp milkweed,
yellow-headed blackbird, and the familiar red-winged blackbird.
The blackbirds are both in bulrushes, an important native
emergent plant we monitor by interpreting aerial photography.

The WDNR La Crosse's vegetation crew uses the airboat to
get into shallow and weedy or otherwise inaccessible areas
during stratified random sampling for submersed vegetation.

American Lotus is a common floating-leafed
plant which provides food for wildlife. We monitor it with
both aquatic vegetation (on the water) methods and remote sensing
(aerial photography) methods.
(Photo by Heidi Langrehr)

Arrowhead is a native plant that provides an important food
source for migrating waterfowl. We monitor emergent plants like arrowhead in the field and by remote sensing (aerial photography).

Wild rice grows in several quiet backwaters
in Pool 8. It provides shelter and food for waterbirds and
is an important source of food for waterfowl during fall
migration. We monitor wild rice in the field and by interpreting aerial photography.
(Photos by Terry Dukerschein)

A research
project on floodplain forest regeneration examined seedling
growth and regeneration in floodplain forests with the eventual
goal being to model floodplain forest succession under varying
hydrological conditions. Two sites in Pool 8 contributed data
to this study, which was conducted at all six LTRMP study
reaches from 19972000.

During spring floods, monitoring tree seedfall
on floodplain forest plots usually located on dry land can
be logistically challenging.

Seedfall, growth, and mortality/survival
data collected from this multi-year study will help scientists
predict floodplain forest composition and succession under
various flooding scenarios.

(Photos by Lisa Hodge Richardson and Heidi
Langrehr)

Two invasives -- an Asian ladybug investigates a flower of purple
loosestrife for small insect prey. Purple loosestrife is
an exotic emergent that has invaded from Europe. The ladybug
is not likely to find the jackpotpurple loosestrife
has few natural enemies and pests in North America and spreads
easily for that reason. It has no food value for most North
American wildlife and displaces plants that do have food
value. Field station personnel monitor purple loosestrife
by interpreting aerial photography.
(Photos by Terry Dukerschein)

More specific information needed to interpret LTRMP data on submersed
vegetation can be found at the following link at the LTRMP
Vegetation Data page.